


Whispers in a Void

by Teleportation_Magic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Pietro Maximoff Feels, Protective Pietro Maximoff, Protective Wanda Maximoff, Sibling Love, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 07:27:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23347669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teleportation_Magic/pseuds/Teleportation_Magic
Summary: Wanda and Pietro are intertwined together, years before, when they had rested in their mother's womb.That never stops, as they years pass them by.
Relationships: Pietro Maximoff & Wanda Maximoff
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	Whispers in a Void

## VIII

Wanda was flitting through the dead grass, brown ferns curling around her feet and crinkling as she took each step. It’s a new school, a new time, and Wanda doesn’t want to be here, but she is. So. She’s going to make friends, she’s going to find a way to be friendly – she hadn’t made any friends before, but she could now. She would, and Pietro would look stupid for saying that she couldn’t make any.

She stopped; limbs frozen as a girl passed in front of her. Wanda took a deep breath, before trying to smile at her. “Hi! My names Wanda! Who’re you?”

The girl was around some other girls, and they were all starting to look at Wanda and Wanda froze a smile on her face. Their looks weren’t nice – there was something sharp about them, something unfriendly, and Wanda wanted to hide deep inside her mind.

The girl Wanda had been talking to looked nervous for half a second, before another older one laughed at Wanda, full out. Wanda didn’t understand, but the first girl let out a nervous titter as well, and then turned to her. Her smile was a little scared but a lot mean and Wanda took a step back.

“Your clothes are dirty.” She said, voice wavering in the air, the other girls laughing behind her. Her spine straightened, and then she gave a cruel smirk. “Can your Mama not pay from them?”

Wanda feels like there’s a hurt in her chest, deep, close to her heart. It was this again, and she didn’t know why this kept happening. She bowed her head and slipped past the group of girls, trying to make sure she didn’t cry of all ridiculous things. The girl grabbed onto her arm as Wanda tried to slide past. Wanda stops, and she tries to tug herself out, but the girl held firm. Her eyes were still unsteady, but Wanda didn’t know why she was doing this. Then she saw a different, older girl looking so proud, and she wanted her to disappear.

“What do you want?” Wanda didn’t ask the girl with her hands clamped around her arm – she asked the girl who was looking at her. The rest of them fell silent, discomfort entering their frames.

“Listen to me.” The girl was looking at her and Wanda didn’t like it. “You look like the people on the streets and Mama always said that the people on the streets were dirty and filthy and bad. Are you on the streets?”

“Let me go!” Wanda tugged her hand, the girl who was holding on almost let her free until she heard a sharp “Apolena.” The older girl’s stupid face scrunched up, and the grip on Wanda’s arm suddenly turned tight.

“I was just curious. You don’t have to be so weird.” She was eying Wanda and Wanda wanted her to stop.

“Leave me alone.”

“Answer my question.”

Wanda heard quick steps behind her and she almost collapsed in relief. “She said leave her alone.” Pietro grabbed her arm, and the girl let go, before fleeing behind the older girl. Pietro held her arm tightly. “Don’t talk to my sister.” He turned around and she walked behind him.

“Fine then.” She went away, and Pietro and Wanda ran to the woods to find a small place to hide – their place to hide. Wanda knew she was tittering and telling everyone else and Wanda had wanted friends so badly but they had to ruin everything and Wanda tries to stop the tears, she doesn’t want to be a crybaby in front of Pietro but her stupid eyes won’t stop.

“Hush Wanda. It’s okay.”

Wanda sniffles. “They’re so mean.”

“I know.” His voice is light and soothing. “I know.”

He has his arm around her, and her face tucked into his chest.

“I wish I had friends.”

“You don’t need friends!” Pietro sounds so exuberant, and Wanda can’t help but fix her eyes on him. “Remember you have me! We are together”

“Together.” Wanda echoes the word quietly, letting it slip off her tongue.

“Yes. Together forever. Promise me.”

Wanda giggles and wipes her tears away before she hugs him. “Promise.”

He grins, and tackles her and they roll to a stop, laughing in the crisp autumn air.

## IX

“Your son is rowdy and rambunctious and doesn’t have any sense!” Their neighbour is being mean to Pietro again, but this time Mama looks like she’s gonna believe him.

“I’m sorry Mr. Varga, we’ll try to discipline him -”

“If he continues to act up, I’m going to complain! Barbora will cancel your apartment! The boy needs to shape up and stop breaking other people’s property!”

“Pietro didn’t break anything,” Wanda said, her voice quiet but hard as steel, “You were the one who knocked over your vase.”

“Because your brother decided it was a good idea to kick his ball right next to my head! He could have shattered the window!” Mr. Varga is heaving, out of breath. Wanda sticks her chin up.

“We didn’t know you were there. And your window didn’t break anyways, so why do you care?”

“Girl–” His voice cuts off and he turns back to their mother. “Get your children in line! Both of them.” He stomps down the hallways and thunders up the stairs.

Mama sighs, before turning to them.

“To your bedroom, both of you.” She looks a little bit angry but mostly tired.

“But Mama, I didn’t do anything-“

“Now, Pietro.”

Wanda tugs on his sleeve and he scowls before heading up with her.

“Mr. Varga is stupid.” Pietro whispered the words to her as they darted around towards their bedroom.

“Maybe. But you shouldn’t be so rude to him – Mama gets so stressed about it.”

“I know.” They tuck themselves next to each other in bed. Pietro fidgets his hand under the blanket and Wanda pokes him in the side. “I know okay!” Wanda shushes him, and He looks away. “I just don’t – do you know how its like to want to do so much but you can’t?”

“No.” Wanda likes being still and reading and imagining things. She doesn’t get Pietro’s want to move, and to do so much of it. “But you shouldn’t make Mama mad.”

“I know.” He leans away from her, moving away on the bed.

“Hey.” Wanda pokes him on the shoulder, this time. “Don’t be so sad.”

Pietro rolled his eyes and looked at her. Wanda poked him on the shoulder again and he knocked his shoulder against her’s.

“Don’t be silly, Pietro.” She said. “Mama’s gonna calm down eventually.”

“She’s gonna be angry at you too, sister.”

“That’s okay.” Wanda said. “We’re in this together, Pietro.”

“Oh.” He still looked sad for a moment before a grin flushed across his face. “Yeah!”

He hugged her, and Wanda shrieked, and they rolled to the side of the bed before quieting when they heard Mama’s steps towards their bedroom, moving to have angelic smiles and hands folded one over the other. She did not enter the room, and their eyes darted to each other, mutual concern rising in their chests.

## X

Mama and Papa are there one second and gone the next.

They heard bombs in the distance, but the always heard the bombs, now. The used to hide, but then it wasn’t worth it, wasn’t worth living all your life in the basement Papa had said. Pietro was holding Wanda tight under the bed and they look outside, trying to see anything, but there is nothing there, nothing except a single bomb that has one word printed on it.

_Stark_

Wanda is shaking a little bit and Pietro is too. The are holding each other tight, trying to share a little heat and comfort. Wanda cannot let go, her arms are shaking so bad and her head feels foggy. There is dust falling into her eyes and flitting over her face. Wanda tries to cover her nose to keep out the heavy stench of blood, the metallic reek, but the smell makes her want to vomit anyways. She tries not to – she doesn’t want to get any on Pietro.

“We are together.” Pietro says, lips trembling amid the ash. There is so much dust, Wanda struggles to inhale. She feels like she is tasting blood every time she breathes.

“Together.” She agrees, voice trembling in the air.

“Together.” Pietro says, squeezing her hand against her’s.

“Together.” Wanda says, like a prayer.

“Together” he chants back.

They cannot see themselves in the dark, but Pietro voice and his hand against hers is the only reminder Wanda has of him as the sun sets and they say the word again and again and again.

“Together, together, together.”

That is all Wanda knows, other than the darkness around her and the bomb named Stark.

## XI

They try to find a place for them, they really do. Wanda and Pietro are ferried from home to home, waiting for a place to stay. There are some places that have a spot open, but they refuse, refuse to go in without the other. Wanda couldn’t lose him too, and Pietro kept one arm clasped tightly around her whenever the workers came to them, and asked them to be reasonable.

Reasonable. Wanda wants to laugh, and Pietro does, behind her. So they give up, and they bounce around, from place to place, whenever they have a pair of spots open.

Wanda keeps her head down, most of the time. She sees children come in from the bombings – there isn’t enough space for them, not for all of them, not will the walls shaking and the explosions that sound through the night, and she is scared that they will eventually give up, that they will put them out on the streets because they’ve pushed too much already. Pietro tries to bargain for more, for both of them, but Wanda needs him not to – she remembers the men and women sat curled up on the streets and she knows it can’t be them. But to not have that – it becomes more and more obvious that they’d have to be apart to stay in one of the homes and Wanda simply cannot accept that.

One day, one of the matrons kneels down next to her.

“The two of you will have to make a choice. We have tried to keep you two together, we really have, but it is becoming increasingly untenable. Tomorrow morning, one of you will be sent to an orphanage on the other side of the city.”

Wanda stomach drops to her knees. She begins to shake a little bit, and Pietro opens his mouth next to her. She elbows him gently, and he is quiet, for just a moment.

“Which one of us?”

“Wanda.” Her voice is soft, and it feels like spiders on her skin. “Be ready tomorrow.”

Pietro gives Wanda a look. Wanda returns a tiny nod.

They stay huddled up in their respective bedroom, sharing with all the other kids. Pietro sneaks into Wanda room when everything was quiet, when there was not a noise to be heard and she grabs the bag she’d packed, and she scurries down with him.

When she has to jump from one of the upper floors, she holds Pietro’s hand tight.

“Together.” He says, and Wanda nods.

“One, two, three!” And they roll onto the dead leaves. Pietro helps Wanda climb to her feet, and then they run. They run and they run and they run, into the dark night. 

## XII

When they are on the streets, they survive by begging and taking jobs. It works, until Wanda falls sick.

She has a pounding headache, and Wanda knows that Pietro knows that they need a few nights in a warm place – someplace they can rest their heads until Wanda gets better. But Wanda finds it hard to make any money when she can barely breath, and they don’t have enough saved up to do anything.

Wanda knows Pietro, and sees the tension coiling under the skin, and she follows him when she can, and she finds him, sprawled across the ground, a woman raging over him. She doesn’t seem to be from here – her clothes don’t match anything anyone else wears, and her English is different from all of theirs’s.

“Miss?” She asks, slow and steady. “What it wrong?”

“The little rascal tried to steal my purse!” Wanda can see her anger but then she kicks Pietro and Wanda can barely see past her’s.

She helps Pietro to his feet, and quietly says “He won’t be bothering you, then.”

She moves slowly and quietly, before her hand darts out and tugs the bag. She gasps, and Pietro picks Wanda up and runs. Wanda rifles through the purse and takes out all the cash, before dropping the purse.

The find their little hideout, a small hole in a building big enough for the two of them. She scuttles in and wait for the woman and the various helpers to pass.

“Why did you go out on your own? Remember, we are together.” Wanda wants to shake him, for how foolish he was. He could have gotten shot, if the police were closer by.

“Sorry Wanda.”

“You should be.” She grumbles. He tucks himself into her side and they hold each other as night passes into day.

When they take themselves to an inn, they can get three nights. The innkeeper lets them in and doesn’t chase them out when they stay a fourth and fifth. He gives them a job, working amid the laundry and the cleaning products, hands rubbed raw but bellies full and a place to sleep, tucked away in a cranny barely enough for the two of them.

## XIII

Wanda doesn’t sleep until her body begs her and even then, it is light, shaking. Her brother is the same, and they sleep tucked together, so when they awake screaming the other wakes with them and assures safety, assures them that they are not back in the house with nothing but each other and the smell of blood lingering in the air.

One day they wake at the same time – they shudder against each other, arms wrapped tight, legs pressed against each other.

“I wish that it had never happened.” It was a childish thought, because it had.

“So do I.” Pietro’s words tangle in her hair, in her mind. She can almost feel the remnants of a long-lost life, one where they were happy, and her parents were there, and they weren’t scrambling on the streets for the barest scrap of something.

Pietro’s voice grew dark as his eyes fixed on her. “Someone did this.”

Wanda nods. Her head is tucked against him, her brother shakes with suppressed rage.

“Someone caused us this misery, sister.” Wanda shifts her head to look up at her brother, before she dragged a muscle over her knuckles.

“We need to pay them back.” Wanda says quietly. “It isn’t fair that whoever it is got to do that, got to cause us this much pain, and they don’t even suffer.”

“Everyone deserves to die.” Pietro’s voice shades a little dark. “Everyone who knew this might happen and didn’t try to stop it.”

“They all deserve death. For Mama and Papa.”

“Yeah.”

“Who would it be?” Wanda is curious if he knows something, if he knows at whom they’re anger’s aimed.

“Stark.” He says immediately, and Wanda almost rolls her eyes.

“Of course, brother. But who else? He made the bomb, but he did not drop it or direct it or choose where it was to land.” He does not respond, and Wanda sees the curl of his shoulder. She turns and taps his shoulder twice and he turns back, questioning look on his face.

“That’s okay. Even if we can only ever avenge them once, it’s okay.”

“Yes.” He wraps his fingers around hers, and Wanda can see the recklessness in his frame, the desire to do something rash, and she pushes her shoulder against his.

“Brother.” She taps his wrist and she sees the darkness suspended in his eyes. “We will get revenge. But you cannot chase it, cannot go off recklessly and try to find it.” She pushes the edge of her shoulder against his. “I cannot lose you.”

He exhales. “Part of me wants to not involve you. I cannot lose you.” He echoes, sharp smile slitting across his face. “But at the same time, being not-together…”

“Never.” Wanda’s voice says softly. “Never Pietro. If we chase revenge, _we_ chase revenge. Together.”

Pietro nodded. “Right.”

Wanda smiled into his chest. “Right.”

## XIV

The SHEILD men came.

First they took adults off the street, promising them to fill their bellies and give them a bed. They never returned, lost somewhere.

Then they took the older children, and they vanished off the street, and Wanda and Pietro traded glances. Those children never returned to the streets, and stories started about steel tables and sharp needles and a spear with a bright blue center.

Then they came for them, looking at the employees in the inn, and choosing them.

Wanda and Pietro weren’t sure when the men first came.

“You will have a safe place.” Wanda and Pietro are unmoved – so may had vanished, never come back. How do they define “safe?”

“You can take your vengeance.” A sharp eyes man said. And the two of them still pause, hesitating. They share glances and take a half step into each other. Wanda does not trust him – she’s read enough stories to know that chasing revenge can lead to disastrous results. They will take their revenge only when it is easy, only when they are not risking their own skin.

“You can fight for your country.” That makes them think – Sokovia was not always like this. Maybe… maybe they can make it better. Maybe they stand a chance maybe if they defeat Sokovia’s enemies. It hung over them. There lay a cause either of them would die for. The men left and came again a day later and Pietro and Wanda left with them.

## XV

The experiments were rough on them. Wanda had felt something in her grow almost immediately when she woke up after they’d done something with the scepter – the made her eyes glow red and the men around her grabbed her and put her in a glass room. It hadn’t stopped since then, the feeling of something on her soul, deep and mysterious and heavy and growing.

For observation, they said, when they surrounded her with glass and concrete. The red made her feel sick, and either way they gave her food and water and a place to sleep so she did not mind. Couldn’t mind, because she knew if this what was she was feeling her brother felt the same, and so Pietro needed a place to rest for a time as well.

He was in the room next to her. That was the only reason she could stay calm, that she could stay sane through the feeling of illness rising in her belly, that he needed her.

There were others, Wanda knew. One girl who had knocked the first guard who touched her unconscious – she had fallen a couple days later, her skin growing more and more dead looking. Another had lightning that crackled through her veins, but Wanda saw it erupt across her skin and tear her apart. Another boy froze the concrete he was sitting on, his veins bulging blue with shards of ice.

Wanda and Pietro were the only ones left, in the end. Wanda leans her head back, and she wishes to talk with her brother, talk with him so that she can be closer than just the faint awareness she had of him now, the faint tickling on the ends of her senses.

And then one day, the red reaches through and Wanda hears his voice in her head.

 _What is this?_ He asks, and Wanda wants to give him a hug. The voice does not sound like his but it is Pietro, regardless. Wanda does not know how she knows but she does.

 _It’s me._ She responds. And she knows he knows – they have always been imprints on each other.

 _Sister?_ He asks. He sounds amazed. _This is incredible._

 _I know._ They sit together for a moment. _You are in pain._

_So are you._

Wanda does not ask if it was worth it – what was done was done.

_Do you want to leave?_

_Not yet. But soon. I think… I do not trust them._

Wanda feels his agreement – the men look at her like she is a thing, and that makes her afraid. She asks Pietro _How will we?_

 _I do not know._ He admits. _Do you know I am fast now? I cross my room in the blink of an eye – it is amazing Wanda._

_I can break things – blocks, mostly, but I can probably break the glass. And I can read minds._

_You are amazing._ Wanda smiles, but he cannot see it. _What should we do?_

Wanda takes a breath. _Stay here until we both get better and we can control our powers and see what they intend to do for Sokovia. If they were lying to us, then we burn this place to the ground._

 _And if they were telling the truth?_ Pietro asks and Wanda hesitates before quietly whispering

 _We stay. At least for a time._ She can’t stop the slow bubble of fear the grows in her stomach, and she blurts out another sentence. _What if they seek to separate us?_ She knows that is what they are thinking – that their reliance on each other is a liability, and that is why the made this concrete wall. But that is one of the things that they have done that sparks sheer, visceral rage in her.

 _Never._ Pietro says. _Never. You and I come together. If they try – then… then…_

 _We run._ Wanda said. _We run and pull the building down._

 _Yes._ Pietro replied. They lean back against the wall, a bright red chain drawn up between them, and her magic wraps and swirls and they are drawn together.

## XVI

Wanda is quiet and Wanda is careful.

A year has passed, and they have gained control of their gifts, and it no longer looks like they’re about to die. So, they turn to each other and plan, just as the men outside turn to each other and start to plan. They make her stomach bubble, and she and Pietro quietly mull over what they can, might, should, do.

_Should we run?_

_Not yet, not yet._ Wanda whispers. _Wait._

_Okay. I don’t think they will let us help._

_I don’t either._ Wanda confessed. _It has been some time and they have not let us out._

_So how do we run?_

_I will break the glass and you grab me and we run._

_That will work._ Pietro says. _It must._

 _What will we do after that?_ Wanda knows that they will follow, now that they hold secrets in their veins. They think they are things, and powerful men are so often jealous, holding their secrets close to their chest.

Pietro tenses, before tersely says. _We can’t do nothing._

 _We won’t. But we stay. For now. And it’s not nothing._ Wanda says. _I might be wrong. Maybe they do intend to help Sokovia._

_Do you really believe that sister?_

Wanda does not. Pietro knows she does not.

_If we run, how will we hide? They have more to find us with than a woman with a lost purse._

_I do not know_. He sounds defeated.

Wanda hesitates. _Do you think there is someone we might be able to turn to for help?_

 _Why would anyone help us?_ Pietro’s voice is sardonic, bitter. _No one ever has before. We are just two orphans, remember?_

 _Before we were just two orphans._ Wanda reminds him. _Now we have power running through our veins. And powerful men are always concerned with how to get more power._

She feels Pietro’s hesitance. _How would we find them sister?_

 _I do not know._ Wanda admits. _But either way, we have no intent to escape, not just yet. If they try to separate us, or do something unneededly cruel..._

_We run. Together._

_Yes._ Wanda knows that word, idea, concept fundamentally, and the word echoes through the core of her bones. _Always together._

 _Always._ Pietro agrees.

## XVII

When the Avengers came Wanda and Pietro almost slipped out.

Almost.

The were going to leave – SHEILD had years with them and had done nothing for Sokovia. They owed them nothing – they’d lied to the twins and were now concerned with leashing them. They could fall under the Avenger’s bombs, for all Wanda cared, because noone made slaves of her and her brother. So they almost left the base undefended except Stark.

Stark, the bombmaker, Stark the weapons creator, Stark the Merchant of Death. Wanda and Pietro only needed to trade glances before he ran off, distracting everyone else.

She could feel Pietro’s faint anger. “You did not kill him.”

“I gave him a dream.” Wanda said, her voice airy. “He will destroy himself.”

They wandered the city after that, relearning it. They were too big to fit in many of their hidey-holes know, and a good deal of them were now lived in by others. Wanda and Pietro searched for a place of their own – some small place they could sleep and rest. And while they search, them come across the oddest thing.

A tiny creature made of metal lands in front of them, and they hear a man’s voice, hallowed and electronic, asking them to consider a proposition of his.

“It will help you save your city.” The words are sharp in the evening air, and Wanda and Pietro share a look before heading for the church. It is a broken thing, devastation wrought across its once majestic frame, but Wanda sees a man hunched over and she knows he is who they are looking for.

“Talk.” She says. “And if you are wasting our time - ”

There was a voice. It cuts her off.

“Do you know that the church lies in the exact center of the city?” The man’s voice is shockingly metallic, even in life. “The elders decreed it so that everyone in the city could be equally close to God. I like that. The geometry of belief.”

And they knew – these were the stories Grandma used to tell them before she died of old age, the stories Pietro and Wanda had listened to when they were not old enough to reach her waist yet. Those stories didn’t matter, now. Wanda steps forward. She is fascinated by the metal gleaming instead of skin, and how the movements of the machine are slow, but there is nothing beyond that – nothing more than a husk she can see but not one she can _see._ She tries more to get closer, to crawl inside, but it is like trying to hold ash.

“You are wondering why you can’t get inside my head.” And Wanda wants to laugh. He thinks that just because she can’t see his mind simply means she can’t see it at all?

“Sometimes it’s hard.” Her voice carves around each letter. “But sooner or later every man shows himself.”

“I’m sure they do. But you need something more than a man. That’s why you let Stark take the scepter.”

“I did not expect - ” her voice cuts off and she looks at him. This was Stark’s destruction, this was their chance for vengeance, to avenge themselves, and she could not waste it. “But I saw Stark’s fear. I knew it would control him. Make him self destruct.”

He turns. “Every man creates the things they dread.” He talks for a time, but Wanda turns her eyes to Pietro. He stands there, neutral.

_Do you want this?_

_Let us see._ He says. _If he is bad…_

_Then we leave._

_Yes._

“-designed to supplant them. To help them… end.”

Wanda ears perk up again. “Is that why you’ve come? To end the Avengers?”

“I’ve come to save the world.” He says briskly, like it expected. Wanda took a sharp breath and turned to Pietro. Could this man really rescue them from all the ash that had piled up?

“But also? Yeah.”

Wanda knows, then, that he understands, is willing to cut down the causers of pain and suffering to achieve goodness, to save the world. She glances to Pietro and he still looks neutral.

They follow him, and he speaks more on his plans, and then he turns to Wanda. There is gleam of almost greed in his incredible not human eyes, but Wanda blinks and it is gone.

“You will tear them apart from the inside.” His words make Wanda shake.

“Everyone’s plan is not to kill them.” Pietro pipes up, and Wanda suddenly turns to him.

“And make them martyrs.” Suddenly his resentment lines up with his plan. “You need patience. You need to see the big picture.” He nods at Wanda then and she sees through the slight manipulation - he values her more than her brother, and it is a slight effort to flatter her, to convince her she is better. She will not fall for it, but she stands, straight backed as he hovers looking at them.

“I don’t see the big picture.” Pietro says, and Wanda silently agrees. “I have a little picture. I take it out, and look at it, everyday.”

“You lost your parents in the bombings.” And what a word that is. Lost. As if Wanda and Pietro had simply misplaced them, as if they might find them if they looked hard enough. “I know. I saw the records.”

“The records.” Pietro says distastefully, and Wanda knows what he is talking about – the vast sheets of paper that documented all the dead. “The records are not the picture.”

“Pietro.” She says, stop in her voice. She can envision ash and dust and blood and she needs it to stop, she cannot panic in front of this man who has not been honest with her, who has tried to manipulate them, she cannot block his presence off.

“No, please.”

Pietro looks to her, and Wanda knows if she says no, he will not. She pulls herself together for a moment, just to be able to send one thought to him.

_This is your story as much as mine. Tell him if you please, don’t if you don’t._

She lets her thoughts wander after that as Pietro’s eyes fix on her, watching her for a breakdown when he slowly says, “We were ten years old. Having dinner, the four of us.” Wanda remembers they were sitting on the table, but she cannot remember the meal, not under the dust that came after.

“And the first shell hits and it makes a hole in the floor. It’s big. Our parents go in.” Wanda never saw this. She’d already pressed her eyes shut to keep out the dust.

“The whole building starts coming apart.” He says, and that Wanda remembers that, in the very least. “I grab her, roll under the bed and the second shell hits. But it doesn’t go off. It just… sits there, in the rubble. Three feet away from our faces. And on the side of the shell, there is one word painted.”

That Wanda remembers. That Wanda will never have the ability to forget. The reminder still makes her want to hide, to huddle up and protect themselves for the world.

“Stark.” She says, remembering the horrific thing.

“We were trapped two days.” Her brother says, and she remembers, remember every second of that, the wasting fear and the sickening boredom and the conviction that that was the day they would die.

“Every effort to save us.” and she can barely speak these words, they rasp out of her throat. “Every shift in the bricks and I think” Wanda stops, and the vivid memory will always come back, no matter how hard she wills it away. “This will set it off.”

“We wait for two days for Tony Stark to kill us.” She remembers it, the memory haunts her, of only having Stark’s name to look at when even her brother’s face was too shaded to make out in the dark.

“They know what they are.” Her brother says, and Wanda and Pietro know too. Bombmakers, destroyers, yet unwilling to pay for the lives they have taken, and those who hadn’t murdered were willing to work with murders. And they turned around and were the Avengers, foisted on them as protection. But they – Wanda and Pietro – they had to avenge themselves and they would.

“I wondered why you two were the only ones to survive Strucker’s experiments.” He looks almost understanding, but Wanda knows his husk of a mind isn’t capable of it. “Now I don’t. We will make it right. You and I can hurt them, but you…” Ultron’s metal fingers perch on Wanda’s cheek and she does not flinch, but she stares him straight in his eyes. “Will tear them apart form the inside.” His eyes have that gleam again, the almost-greed gleam, but they can’t since all his eyes are and light fixed in metal. His finger drop, and he moves away, before offering them a place to rest for the night before their action tomorrow.

 _I know I want to do this._ Wanda thinks quietly. _Do you?_

 _I want to as well._ He sounds hesitant though, and Wanda hates when he does this, choosing what he hates to please her.

 _No._ Wanda insists. _If you do not want to, then we will not. That is what together means, nothing that I can force you or you can force me. Do not do this because I want to if you do not._

He grins then, quick and sudden. _Nah, we’ll do it your way. See what he will do, and if it is like HYDRA again, we leave._

_Alright. But if you ever want to leave…_

_I’ll tell you sister._ He smiles quick and sudden then. _When have I never?_

They press closer to each other, savouring each other’s warmth.

## XVII

“Aye, this is funny, Mr. Stark. It’s what, comfortable? Like old times?” Pietro gestures at the weapons, stacked on stacks and stacks and stacks.

“This was never my life.” And oh, the lie burns at her. He would think they’d listen to his pretty protests, his apparent falsehoods?

“You two can still walk away from this.” And the captain’s fake sympathy makes her song of fury rise to an almost burning pitch.

“Oh, we will.” She says, the same condescension in her tone.

“I know you’ve suffered.” He says, his every word earnest sounding despite its falsehood. Wanda tunes them out, focusing on her fingers and the power she called to the surface, looking at each of their minds to see who’d she take first. And when Ultron attacks, Stark flying to him, she let that power pulse and uses it to knock the Captain to the ground. Wanda stays back behind Ultron while Pietro runs them down, safe in his speed. She goes when it looks safer, but also when she cannot see him on the battlefield, cannot see his bright blue in the air, and she spells the blond one first. He steps, and her magic takes a second before he falls. She moves on to the Captain next, warping his mind with the red. She keeps moving, looking for the redhead.

Wanda allowed each step of her’s to be as quiet as a cat’s paw, as unknowable as the fish that swam in the deep. She cast and cast, fear and nightmares on all of them who were allied with the man that was responsible for her’s and in that moment Wanda felt powerful, truly and honestly for the first time since she was ten years old and suffocating on dust and ash.

She turned and left, and she saw the archer who’d downed Pietro and she allowed the bright red of her magic to form before he turned.

And then

Pain.

Her skin like it was being flayed alive. Everything hurt, her nails, her toenails, the tips of her hair. She let out a scream and she think he said something, but her mind was spiraling, wisps of her sense falling past her as she pulled a breath in, trying to fill her lungs with air.

And then her brother and then she was safe and then her mind was clear and she fell boneless into her brother’s arms. He set her on her feet gently, and she leaned back and let her lungs fill with air.

“Are you okay?” Wanda was hunched over and Pietro had one arm on her back.

“Yeah. Yeah, just give me a moment.” She heaves a draws air back into her lungs. She feels her breath slowly even, her head stop spinning.

“I’ll kill him.”

“No.” He couldn’t go off on his own, completely thoughtlessly. He’d kill himself.

“We don’t have to do this.” His voice was urgent, his hand on the back of her neck to tilt her head up. Wanda leaned into his hand, before straightening her back.

“But I will.” Pietro was right. They needed to finish this. But Wanda was tired, and she hurt and she just wanted this to be done, wanted Stark to be gone, so that they could stop. “I want the big one.”

She let her magic do what it wanted – let it enrage the beast into attacking Stark. They take glances – the beast is feral. Rabid. It leaps and that is all the risk they are willing to take before Pietro picked her up and they dart back to Ultron.

“Finished?” Ultron let them in, and the two of them huddle against a wall as the craft slowly left the ground and they left for someplace.

Wanda didn’t know where, but wasn’t that the point? They were done, Stark would be dead. They were free now.

She felt a small miserable pit in the core of her stomach. Her eyes darted to Pietro and she saw his eyes reflecting the same back.

“He’s dead.” Wanda whispers. “He’s dead and gone.”

But when they slept, the nightmare felt no less real, ash and dust amid the faint smell of blood. She still awoke silently, having taught herself to staunch her screaming years ago. She clutched her brother’s hand close to her heart, and he wrapped his arm around her tight.

“We aren’t chasing anymore.” He said, fingers wiping the tears off her face.

“No more revenge.” She agrees. “I feel… dirty.”

“No more.” He says firmly. “I don’t want to do that again.”

She nods against his shoulder. They breath together, their chests rising and falling together.

## XVII

“He’s dreaming.” Wanda said. Pietro did not understand her fascination, he couldn’t see the way minds spilled across her sight, escaped their containers of flesh. She moved closer, curiosity blossoming across her mind. He was a newborn, a babe, and yet so incredibly old, a relic of times and times that had died. She brushed her fingers against the glass and sent her red into his mind, a light touch on his thoughts.

She felt her whole body move as she delved and delved, and she felt herself perch on the first memory, a memory of purpose but the second she sees it, the vision sprouts horror.

She saw it spread, suddenly across her mind, death and devastation and a comet falling from the sky and the earth caving and caving and rising, Sokovia buckling as its city is dashed into ashes. She sees death spread across the world, children crying as the ash settles on them, before earth swallows them whole. She sees the metal men living, surviving, as bones rest throughout the whole of the earth and al she can do is gawp at the destruction. 

Pietro pulls her into him. She knows he knows – his mind is too close to her’s for him not to. He pulls her in and his arms surround her but the memory is secondhand to her’s.

“How could you?”

“How could I what?” How dare he play dumb after what he intends, what he wants to accomplish and was using them to do?

“You said we would destroy the Avengers. Make a better world – “

“It will be better.” Her says with a calm unmovable certainty.

“When everyone is dead?” Her voice trails off, high and unsteady.

He shambles forehead, metal parts whirring and clicking. “Humanity will have every opportunity to improve.”

Pietro moves in front of her, keeping her frame behind his. “And if they don’t?”

“Ask Noah.”

They know the story of Noah – Grandma taught them at her knee. She remembered tugging on her skirt, asking why, and her Gramma telling her that it was men’s evil, men’s monstrosity that caused God to send down devastation. But _Ultron was not God._

“You’re a madman.”

She can feel his lack of regard for it, for anything either of them could ever say. “There were more than a dozen extinction level events before even the dinosaurs got theirs. When the earth starts to settle, God throws a stone at it. And believe me, he’s winding up. ”

Wanda knows, then, that he cannot be reasoned with, that he was convinced with this idea.

“We have to evolve.” He says, and Wanda takes a breath when he looks away and flicked the tiniest bit of magic to the Asian woman.

In the same moment, her brother’s soft voice asks “Who decides who’s weak?” Her eyes cleared quickly, and she looked around bewildered before her expression cleared.

“Life.” He laughs a little, and Wanda doesn’t know what that means, he will wipe out all life if he continues as it is. “Life always decides.”

Pietro moves closer to her as Ultron says “There’s incoming.”

 _Run?_ He asks, almost sarcastic. Wanda presses her head into his chest and he presses a small kiss to her forehead. _Wanda, I need you here for this._

Wanda nods, but there is no real thought in it, her mind too absorbed with the truth of what she’s done. She had – she kicked him into being, and now everything’s falling apart. She led them here, she led Pietro to this thing’s jaws, she worked with him and now everything might die, the orphans on the street, the woman who’d saved her so long ago, every person who is. She could faintly hear his voice in the background before the freed woman said “That won’t be a problem.” There is a clicking noise, and then he fires at her and Wanda feels fear press up in her throat and Pietro wraps his arms around her and they leave, quick as thunderclap.

She wrapped her arms around her brother. Her arms a trembling, her brother’s arms are trembling. “What have we done?”

“We have made a mistake.” Pietro said, voice mournful, determined. “We must fix it.”

“Yes.” Wanda breathes her tears seeping into his shirt. “We must. He wants to – Pietro he wants to kill everyone.”

“We can stop it. You and I, there is nothing we cannot do when we are together.”

There lies the echo of a long-remembered chant. She nods, her face pushed into his, guilt rising in their bellies.

“We will set it right.” His voice is certain, unshakable and Wanda breathes and believes him.

“We will.”

## XVII

They prepare to fight, all the Avengers and Pietro and Wanda, and Wanda thinks that this is nothing like she expected even a month ago.

“Had you told me, I would have been shocked.” Pietro agrees.

“And violent.” Wanda adds, smile on her lips.

“You are not funny.”

“But I am honest.”

“You have a single virtue.” Pietro responds grudgingly. “One single virtue to hold to your name. Yet I have a dozen.”

Their voices are quiet, hidden under the drone of the carrier. They sit together, tucking themselves tightly against each other. The Captain and Stark are sitting in the seats, piloting the vehicle, with the blond armoured man and the man who held the beast all clustered around each other, speaking in a whispered hush. The archer and the robot – Vision, had he been named? – was sitting on the bench, both of them alone. The archer cocks his head at her as she passed over him before he walks back and settles next to her.

She shuffles back into Pietro and her brother wraps his arms around her, tension vibrating through their veins.

“You two are siblings, correct?” He isn’t hostile, not yet. But there is a part of his tone that made Wanda remember how to call her magic and hold it tight in her head.

“Yes. He is my twin.”

“You are my twin.” Pietro corrects, “I came first.”

Wanda elbows his arm, and he flicks her back and the archer raises an eyebrow at them. Wanda stops, and sets her hands in each other, the pad of her finger running across the palm of her hand.

“And you’re joining us all of a sudden.” He says, voice harsh and rough. “But before Ultron was even in the picture you were trying to kill us.”

Wanda’s eyes dart to Pietro, and she beats him to the punch. “We were angry, and we deserved justice.” Her voice is firm, she could not falter now. She had spent so long, they both had, chasing _him_ trying to unmake what he'd done to them. “We thought to take it on Stark, for his part in what had happened.”

“What happened?”

“Our parent’s death, our own entrapment, the decay of our country, does it matter which?” Pietro’s voice carries that almost invisible tension, but the archer doesn’t seem to notice it, even though she sees that Stark has his ears pointed, that even from his seat his shoulders were pointed just the tiniest bit to them.

“Entrapment? By HYDRA?” The archer is curious, but his voice is void of anything else.

“HYDRA?” Pietro asks, and Wanda agrees. That is a name they have never heard before.

“Yeah,” he says, “where you got your, you know,” he waves his hands about and Wanda sees the rough approximation of her own hands and the form they make.

“No, that was SHEILD.” Wanda says, and the captain’s shoulder’s twitch alongside the archer’s. “And we went willingly with them. They might have not let us leave, but we never really tried, in truth.”

“You never tried to leave.” He echoes. “You though you could trust them?”

“No.” Wanda says, “No, I knew we couldn’t, that they’d lied to us. But in the beginning we were too sick to move, and later there was too much risk in running. We did not want to have to look behind each step to keep in front of them.” She fingers her palm and her brother places his cool hand on

“It was the best choice.” Pietro interjects. “For us. They promised we could help Sokovia, and we did not know that wasn’t a promise they intended to keep until much, much later.”

“So, what did you mean then?” His voice is harsh, except it isn’t really, more edged and hard. Not aimed at them, but something. Wanda feels like there’s something she’d not seeing, not hearing.

Their eyes dart to each other, and Wanda doesn’t want to start the story, in the least. It is always a hard one to tell, and she does not know how Pietro has the courage for it. “The bombs – his bombs – they fell on the city. We never learned what they were aiming for, but whatever it was, that wasn’t all they hit.”

“Oh.” His voice didn’t soften, but half of the edge came off. He was not sympathetic, but it was less harsh a gaze. “Your parents?”

“Yes.” Wanda whispers. Her throat is too thick to do any more. She will not cry, _she will not,_ but the hurt doesn’t end. She coughs twice, and when she speaks, her voice is a little bit brutal, a little bit harsh, but it is not soft. “Another one fell after the first, and it trapped us under our dining table.”

“It did not explode.” Pietro adds. “But we could not move – we could not see a way out, and we were too scared that too much would make it explode.”

“We were stuck under it for two days.” Wanda says, her voice unmoving.

Wanda lets her small shoulder fall back into his chest. The archer’s eyes are fixed on them, unendingly watchful. Wanda wants him to stop, Pietro wants him to stop, and her brother takes a breath before he blurts out “Your redheaded friend. Where is she?”

Wanda sees something shift, but she can’t tell what it is. Something small in his frame that goes from still to tighter, but it is barely perceptible.

“Ultron captured her,” a testy note to his voice. “We’re going to rescue her, now. And take Ultron down. You’re wearing her jacket, you know?”

She has good taste then. Pietro seems to tense for a moment, before his limbs go loose. “We’ll help you find her.” And it is not an apology, because the twins are not sorry, but it is something similar.

He watched them carefully. “I’d like that.”

His eyes pass over the two of them, together, and Wanda does not know what he is looking for but she thinks he finds it. “Say, the two of you are pretty powerful together.”

Pietro pushes Wanda a little and she purses her lips. “I suppose.” He is looking for something, there is something searching in his gaze. “What is it?”

“Oh nothing, just thinking.” He is lying to her – or telling the truth, but whatever thinking he is doing it is not just. It is something more than just.

## XVII

Stark corners them before they leave.

It is awkward. Wanda jolts backwards when he strolls close to them, his fingers settling then unsettling against each other.

“The bomb.” He says, and of course that is what he is interested in.

“Are you trying to say it wasn’t your fault?” Pietro’s voice is caustic, harsh. “Do you think that there is any way that you are absolved, that you are not responsible for what you made?”

He takes a step sideways, and Wanda and Pietro watch him closely. “I had a friend, an associate really. He was responsible for the selling of my weaponry. He hid… a lot of things from me, I didn’t really know at the time, I didn’t really know for a long time, but yeah. I only really knew about everything – the fact that terrorists were using them – when he turned around and attacked me.” He put out a half-laugh, a dark sound that echoed in the twin’s ears. “I didn’t really expect… I hadn’t really thought everything about this through haven’t I?”

“Who sold them?” Pietro’s voice is curious, but under it is a vast sea of darkness and Wanda hovers between go, chase, and stay, rest.

“Obidiah Stane, but he’s dead now.” His fingers tapped thrice across his arm before coming to rest on his shoulder “Was killed a couple years back.”

“I don’t know what you are trying to say.” Wanda spoke. “Are you saying it is not your fault?”

“No. Well, yes, but no.” His hands were telling her more than he was.

“Get to the point.” Pietro says, a drop of anger diffusing through his temperament.

He seemed to take a deep breath, before muttering quietly under his breath “I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing, you realize.” His head jerked back up, and he clapped his hand once before standing up on his heels. “Anyways, I had never intended for you two to suffer, and, well, I apologize for what happened to you.” He was looking right behind them, eyes fixed on the metal of the helicarrier behind them. He didn’t want to be here. They didn’t want to be here. The awkwardness was also worst that everything else the man had done – not done, Wanda thought, but been a part of and even that was minimized. Minimized to a grain – had they gone after a man who hadn’t done anything?

He had built the bomb. He _had._ And yet, she remembered the exhaustion after they’d thought him dead, the miserable pit that had yawned open somewhere inside her and she shares a glance with Pietro.

“Okay.” She says slowly.

“Alright.” Pietro continues.

He gives them a nod, before turning away and the two of them march slowly but surely onto the battlefield, into the chaos of metal and color.

## XVII

Wanda feels something stretch and stretch and the red chain cast between her and her brother flexes and disappears.

Wanda screams. She falls to her knees, her grief bright and angry and red. She screams and screams and screams as the red pulls the bots apart.

She pants. Her skin is too tight – she lets the red loose, allows it to consume and consume and consume. Her throat is hot and red and her soul feels like she’s burning alive. She destroys and destroys and destroys. Her arms fall next to her knees and for a second she thinks and prays she was dead.

She climbs to her knees, shaky, unstable. She grabs the railing and stumbles into a building to the thing she knows is lying there, and she falls to her knees in front of an Ultron.

“Wanda, If you stay here, you’ll die.”

And Wanda wants to laugh and laugh and laugh. Doesn’t he know? He tore half her soul away and he thinks anything’s left?

“I just did. Do you know how it felt?”

He doesn’t. He can’t. The only thing he cares about is him and his mission, and even then it is distant, death something alien. Wanda has growth up with death, breathes it and lived in it and she knows how to dread it and he simply can’t.

But. But she wants to let him feel what little he can, what little and pitiful terror his heart can conjure. She pulls and pulls and pulls and then the metal artifact lays in her hand.

“It felt like that.” She tells his limp body. His head doesn’t respond. She leans back as her city falls, and she closes her eyes and waits to die.

And then she doesn’t. Then there are arms around her waist, arms made of metal and flesh, and she opens her eyes to a bright red face. He carries her out and she cannot move – the air presses to hard on her. She wants to tell him to let her go but she can’t, and she is frozen, arrested in time.

Her drops her off near her brother. Wanda stumbles to her feet and comes to rest near him. Barton is hovering over them, regret etched on his face.

She put her hands on his face and traced the bulletholes with the pads of her fingers.

“He died saving my life. Mine and a kid’s.” The man said, his voice hoarse. “I’m so sorry Wanda.”

And Wanda felt herself shake her head. “No. He’s not truly gone, not yet.”

“Wanda?” Clint asks.

She pressed her hand against her brother heart and feels her magic search, search across this plane and then the next and the next. Her magic searches and searches and then she feels – feels her magic trip upon the bond.

She cannot see it, because it goes sideways, not forward. And maybe, just maybe, she could follow…

“If this goes poorly, tell Pietro I’m sorry.” Her voice is so far away, an echo on an echo on an echo.

“Wanda? Wanda!” Clint’s face is one of surprise and shock and Wanda slips in between, and she follows that bright red chain.

## XVII

Wanda feels herself slowly slot into existence, turning from not being to being.

“Little girl.” There is a woman standing, spear in her hand. Her eyes are fixed on Wanda, her head tilted, just a tad. “Why are you here?”

“You have something.” Wanda says, her voice slightly hoarse. “You have my brother.”

Wanda knows this for a fact. The link she’d always imagines with Pietro was streaming out of her now, a bright red chain and led somewhere behind the woman. Wanda touches it, and she feels her brother’s confusion, then his shock at what she’s feeling, and then his feeling of hope mixed with worry so potent in very nearly drowns her.

The woman puts an arm around Wanda’s shoulders and Wanda flinches away. “Don’t be afraid, child, I cannot kill you.” Her hands seem to have no muscle on them, only paper-thin skin on top a set of bones. She is beautiful, but bleached, like summer flowers in a winter’s cold.

“Why should I give him to you?” Her voice is whispery, insubstantial, like the wind snatched her words away as soon as they left her mouth.

“I have nothing to offer you.” Wanda says steadily. “No trade that will be worth what he is.”

“Nothing that I want.” The woman says, words passing playfully over her tongue. “At least you are honest.”

“But.” Wanda carries on as if she hadn’t spoken. “If you do not give him to me, I will come down here, again and again and again, driving you mad with my requests. I will scream, I will chant, I will do everything in power to make your existence as awful as possible, until you return him. I will find a way to tear your castles down, I will find a way to tear your kingdom apart, I swear it, if you do not return my brother.”

There is dead silence for a second. Wanda doesn’t feel fear when she says those words – what is she without her brother? There is nothing more for her to lose, nothing more she is. The woman hums, before her hands move up the back of Wanda’s head. She turned and carefully put her nails into Wanda’s hair, separating the it into four different portions.

“Your brother made a similar deal, you know.” Her voice is steady and a little amused. She started braiding Wanda’s hair, and Wanda feels the slight tug of strand over strand over strand. There is something dark to her tone, but Wanda does not have enough in her to care. “He said he’d leave my castle alone if I returned him to you. I was almost tempted to send up my own sentinels to kill you so I could drag your soul down here, just so he’d stop bothering me. The two of you are remarkably similar.”

“Will you do it?” Wanda asked. The woman hummed, before tugging to the strand.

“Hush, girl. Give me a moment to think.” Wanda feels her hands go further and further down, until she reaches the bottom of her braid. She plucks some vine from a plant and wraps it around the end of Wanda’s hair. The vine is tightened, and she lets go before running her hand down Wanda’s head.

“Very well. You have me convinced.” The woman turns around and sits back in a chair tat hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. “But I have a condition. To return with your brother, you will have to walk back. And he will follow you, but you cannot look at him. Should you, I will take your brother back, but there will be no further harm to you. You have until that sun” And when she points, light bursts into existence right above them, moving downwards. “reaches that horizon. Sound fair?”

“Very well.” Wanda says.

“Good.” The woman’s fingers move through the air, and she motions for Wanda to turn around. Wanda feels the red chain tighten. “Very well, be on your way, the two of you.” Wanda takes a step as something bony grabs her shoulder and she almost turns. She digs her heels into the ground as the woman’s mouth moves next to her ear.

“I forgot to tell you. Should you make it back to the world you left, you will have to pay a price to return your brother to the land of the living.”

Wanda took a deep breath. “I will pay it then, whatever it is.”

“What is it?” And Pietro’s voice makes her startle and she almost looks. Wanda feels the woman’s spreading smirk against her cheek before she stands straight.

“Oh, it’s a surprise.” The woman says. “Are you sure you want me to tell?”

Wanda feels a beat pass, before the woman lifts her hand off her shoulder. Wanda heard faint whispering, before Pietro lets out an exclamation. He quiets, and a few moments later then Wanda sees the woman slide into her view again.

“Good luck on your journey, child. Are you sure that you want to do this?”

Wanda looks her in the eye. “Together.” She says, an echo of an echo of an echo. “We must be – always. Together. You understand, I cannot lose him.”

“Very well.” She says. “I wish for your success. Not another peek out of you, little girl.”

“Wanda!” Pietro says. Wanda ignores him. She walks.

## XVII

“Wanda do not do this.” Wanda ignores him.

“Wanda, look at me.” Wanda does not.

“You cannot pay that price, Wanda.” Wanda can. Wanda will. Anything for Pietro.

“Wanda, stop.” She feels the edge of his hand on her face, and she closes her eyes.

“Wanda.” His arms hang tight around her.

“No.” She says. “No, I cannot go without you, I’m sorry, Pietro, I am selfish. I know there will be a price – an awful one – but anything for you. I am so sorry.”

“You will not pay it Wanda, I will.” His voice is hard, his hands are tight, and Wanda feels the slightest bit of sweat.

“You lie.” She says, hint of a waver in her voice. “I am sorry, Pietro, I know I could not bear to see you suffer, but please, Pietro, I have to do this.”

“Wanda, please.” Pietro is begging, and it turns Wanda’s stomach to hear that, but she continues to walk.

“No.”

Her eyes are shut tight, and he is trying to push her back, but in this realm she is so much stronger. She simply walks, and he follows.

“Wanda.”

“I know Pietro.”

“Wanda, open your eyes!” Pietro says, urgency in his tone. “There is a monster ahead!”

Wanda stops. She waits. Nothing happens.

“You thought that would work?” She bumps her shoulder against his.

“I thought I would try.” He grumbled. “You were more gullible when we were younger.”

“You were a better liar, you mean. You got worse as you aged.”

“I’m pretty sure you were worse.” He teased lightly, but there is a defeated tone to his voice. Wanda bumped his shoulder.

“Do not worry brother. All will be well.”

His arms wrap tightly around her and he presses his face into her shoulder. “Wanda, please.”

“Pietro, if you fear me dying – please, let this be a happy time, then. If this is the last time we meet, let it be a good one.”

Pietro stops for a second, and Wanda squeezes his hand before moving forward, eyes shut tightly. “You think you might die.”

“She can’t kill me, she said.” Wanda’s voice is light, tremulous, “but she might have lied. Or maybe there is some workaround. I do not know. But, Pietro, I will die for just a few more moment in between us, and brother, you deserve to live so much more than I do.”

“Wanda, please, no.” He sounds scared for what seems like the first time in forever.

“I am selfish.” Wanda says, her voice warbling a tad. “I am sorry, brother, that you must pay the cost for it.”

“There is nothing I could ever hold against you, sister.” His arms are tight around her.

The hike together, speaking of times and stories and memories long past, of what they hope to do if they both live, but Wanda knows they won’t.

“We are at the edge.” Wanda allows the slightest bit of light to flood into her eyes, and she sees Clint, perched over her body. An Asian woman is standing next to her, with Natasha right next to both of them. She shut her eyes quickly.

“Can we wait?” She looks into the sky and sees the sun still setting. They have time.

“I will take any and every second we have together.” Pietro has her flush against her chest.

“I am scared.” Wanda confesses, words escaping quickly.

“There is nothing to be afraid of.” Pietro reassures. “Mama and Papa will help you, when you are beyond.” Wanda nods, and her tears stain his shirt.

“Clint will help you. He is a good man.”

“Yes.”

The sun sets, and Wanda knows time is running out. Her eyes dart open, and she sees the top of the curve spiralling to the horizon. She shuts them again before Pietro can pass in front of her.

“This is it.”

“Yes.” Pietro responds.

“We will walk.”

“Together?”

“Together.”

The link hands and take a single step forward.

## XVII

Wanda opens her eyes, and everything is more solid, more real, and then there is pain on her chest, like nothing she’s felt before.

“Oh.” She says softly. Her hand drifts to her midsection. There is blood on her hand. “Oh.”

Pietro darts into the room and picks her up and drops her in the cradle that Ultron had used. The Asian woman’s eyes go wide, before she yells at Pietro “tweezers, lung first!” Wanda shakes, and she feels black spots dance across her vision. He seems to be gone for half a second before something jerks on Wanda’s chest and a piece of bloody metal lands on a plate. His limbs move impossibly quickly, and soon there is a plate full of metal bullets. The pull hurts less and less, and Wanda feels the pain fade, a relic of something that isn’t useful to her anymore-

Wanda knows, suddenly, almost instinctively that she will die. She feels darkness dance and her slow slide into it and she plants her nails in her aliveness but she feels herself slowly slipping away. If her soul had a shape, it might be waist-deep in darkness now, a vine around her ankle and pulling, and only a few fingers keeping her above.

 _No._ Her brother’s thoughts are certain, unmovable. Something surges in her and Wanda gasps. The centre of her chest jerks back and the bright red chain is all Wanda could think about, with Pietro’s blue fingers wrapped around it.

 _No. You will live._ Wanda felt her brother drag her out of the darkness, and her soul shakes, drawn between two equally strong pulls, but Wanda refused to fall into the dark. Wanda wraps her will, her hopes and dreams and wants and more than any of that _love_ until she is glued to the chain, pulling back up to her brother. The tugs her up, inexorably tied together, until something snaps, and Wanda hurtles back to her small, shaking frame.

The woman taps a screen, and Wanda sees the glass close and she feels something against her skin.

And there is pain. So much pain. But her eyes fix on Pietro’s and his face is pushed up against the glass and he looks so stupid.

“We will stay together.” He mouths, and Wanda knows it to be true, so true it steals her breath away, and she cannot help giving him a smile of triumph, of victory.

## XVII

She opens her eyes. In half a moment, Pietro moves from hunched over on a chair to hovering over her.

“You idiot.”

“It worked?” Wanda’s hand reaches up and she holds his shoulder tight.

“You _moron._ ” There is so much tension slipped under his frame but Wanda smiles because he is alive.

“Pietro?” Her voice is light and almost warbles, but she makes sure he doesn’t hear it.

“Yes?”

“Together. Or not at all.”

He touches the glass lightly. “Fine, sister. Together.”

Wanda smiles at him, and he returns it, and the glass opens and their hands are linked and all is well in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> I am going to tie up my anxiety and lock it in the back and it can’t stop me.   
> The thing about Wanda and Pietro that I find so interesting is their ride or die attitude, and that kind of seeps into all their other interactions. I really wanted to write a fic that thoroughly explored that dependence, and how they don’t really have a healthy way of venting it. Plus, I wanted HYDRA to be kinda nice to them but Wanda still suspecting anyways, because Wanda strikes me as someone who’s naturally distrustful of people’s motivations when they’re outside of the circle of People She Trusts (in canon, it includes Pietro, Clint, Vision, and mayyyyyyybe Steve and Natasha). Pietro, less so, even though he can be, I think he’s more naturally friendly, but in a kind of rude way? (though I didn’t really get to explore that here, augh) (All in all I’m kinda dissatisfied with Pietro’s characterization because he is a quipper but that is something that’s not really in my wheelhouse as of yet(I gotta learn that. argh))  
> I don’t know what that end came out of, I just really wanted Wanda to be happy, and well I love the Power Of Love trope, and soooo yeah. Ms. Death Lady is kinda based on Persephone, but the details on her personality are a little wonky (this is more in line with the older versions of the tale where the gods are more vicious in general, but even then Persephone is usually depicted as more gentle). Wanda’s walk is a kind of adaptation of the myth of Orpheus, who had to walk all the way back to the overworld but couldn’t look at his wife (but he couldn’t speak to her either, and he ended up giving in because he needed to know if she was actually there.) This story is more or less messing with Pietro – making his sister be the one to pull them away. Course they end up defying death together in the end, because again, I love a happy(ish) ending.


End file.
